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Glitches reported at early voting sites in Guilford, Davidson

What’s become an unwelcome recurrence during election seasons – glitches with voting machines – is happening again at early voting polls in Guilford and Davidson counties.

Election officials have received reports from voters that touch-screen voting machines aren’t properly recording their selection of candidates. About two dozen reports, including one at the early voting poll in Jamestown, had been made by voters in Guilford County through Thursday morning, according to the county Board of Elections. As of Thursday morning, two reports had come into the Davidson County Board of Elections about glitches with recording votes.

The Randolph County Board of Elections doesn’t use touch-screen machines, said Board of Elections Director Melissa Johnson.

Guilford County Board of Elections Director George Gilbert said during each election season, a relative handful of voters report problems with the touch-screen voting machines. This year’s reports aren’t out of line with previous presidential election years, Gilbert told The High Point Enterprise.

The glitch occurs because of the calibration between the touch screen layered on top of the display screen.

“The two have to communicate with each other. It puts an ‘X’ on different parts of the screen. If you touch that ‘X,’ it tells the display screen here’s where the touch screen corresponds with the display screen,” Gilbert said.

The machines are calibrated each morning before voting begins. But during their use, a machine may get out of calibration, Gilbert said. If someone has a question or concern about a voting machine, the voter can shift to another one.

“We then recalibrate the machine, which takes about 60 seconds. Then we test it and we put it back in service,” Gilbert said. “It’s a fairly rare occurrence, when you consider we’ve had maybe two dozen people who experienced this, but we’ve had 60,000 early voters (through Thursday morning).”

One backup for voters is that – once they have cast all their votes on a machine – they are prompted to review their choices before completing their ballot, Gilbert said. So the review would allow a voter to notice a calibration problem that affected their choice of candidates.

The Guilford County Board of Elections spent about $3.5 million six years ago for the voting machines currently in use, Gilbert said. The maintenance cost for the machines is several thousand dollars per year on average, he said.

At the early voting location in Jamestown on Thursday, a sign was posted on the door of the Town Hall building advising people about touch screens and asking them to make poll workers aware of any problems. Also, a poll worker called out to people standing in line about the use of touch-screen machines.

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